Depth Super-Resolution with Hybrid Camera System

An important field of research in computer vision is the 3D analysis and reconstruction of objects and scenes. Currently, among all the the techniques for 3D acquisition, stereo vision systems are the most common. More recently, Time-of-Flight (ToF) range cameras have been introduced. The focus of this thesis is to combine the information from the ToF with one or two standard cameras, in order to obtain a high- resolution depth imageopenEmbargo per motivi di segretezza e/o di proprietà dei risultati e informazioni di enti esterni o aziende private che hanno partecipato alla realizzazione del lavoro di ricerca relativo alla tes

IL DIFENSORE CIVICO

The research aims to investigate the Australian Ombudsman of Commonwealth in order to understand if its experience is useful to relaunch the Italian Ombudsman. The opportunity to arrange a comparative study between Australia and Italy comes from a simple acknowledgement based on statistics: in Australia, a single Ombudsman is able to cover all the Commonwealth with very good results. In Italy, instead, an Italian national Ombudsman does not even exist and, despite of the commitment of many Regional Ombudsman, the results are really poor

Robust 3D Surface Reconstruction from Light Fields

Light field data captures the intensity, as well as the direction of rays in 3D space, allowing to retrieve not only the 3D geometry information, but also the reflectance properties of the acquired scene. The main focus of this thesis is precise 3D geometry reconstruction from light fields, especially on scenes with specular objects. A new semi-global approach for 3D reconstruction from linear light fields is proposed. This method combines a modified version of the Progressive Probabilistic Hough Transform with local slope estimates to extract ori- entations, and consequently depth information, in epipolar plane images (EPIs). The resulting reconstructions achieve a higher accuracy than local methods, with a more precise localization of object boundaries, as well as preservation of fine details. In the second part of the thesis the proposed approach is extended to cir- cular light fields in order to determine the full 360° view of target objects. Additionally, circular light fields allow retrieving depth even from datasets acquired with telecentric lenses, a task which is not possible using a linearly moving camera. Experimental results on synthetic and real datasets demon- strate the quality and the robustness of the proposed algorithm, which pro- vides precise reconstructions even with highly specular objects. The quality of the final reconstruction opens up many possible application scenarios, such as precise 3D reconstruction for defect detection in industrial optical inspection, object scanning for heritage preservation, as well as depth segmentation for the movie industry

Antimicrobial activities of various essential oils against foodborne pathogenic or spoilage moulds

The use of essential oils in the food industry, as natural sanitizing agents, requires the definition of optimal conditions. The aim of the present work was to evaluate some antimicrobial activity parameters as mycelial growth inhibition, minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum fungicidal concentration (MFC) of six essential oils against Aspergillus niger, Aspergillus terreus,Chaetomium globosum, Penicillium chrysogenum, Penicillium pinophilum, Trichoderma harzianum and Trichoderma viride. The antimicrobial activity of essential oils was monitored by the macrodiluition technique. The mycelial growth inhibition, fungistatic and fungicidal concentrations were recorded for each strain that showed sensitivity to the essential oils. The essential oils of catnip, cinnamon, tea tree and thyme essential oils exhibited a large spectrum antimicrobial activities; those of clary sage and laurel inhibited the mycelial growth in a few fungal strains. The essential oils of cinnamon and thyme had the lowest MIC and MFC values against all the fungi assayed, followed by catnip, tea tree, clary sage and laurel. The use of these natural products rather than, the currently used antifungal chemicals, may be of interest given that: i) essential oils are of natural origin which means they are safer for human health and the environment and ii) there is less chance that the pathogenic microorganisms will develop resistance

Organizational Life Cycle Assessment: The Introduction of the Production Allocation Burden

none5noneManzardo, Alessandro; Loss, Andrea; Niero, Monia; Vianello, Chiara; Scipioni, Antonio*Manzardo, Alessandro; Loss, Andrea; Niero, Monia; Vianello, Chiara; Scipioni, Antoni

3D Digitization and Web Publishing of an ISMAR Cartographic Heritage: Historical Maps of Venice Lagoon

Recently a collection of ancient maps was found in the Institute of Marine Sciences of CNR in Venice. The collection includes maps, perspective views, pilot books and ancient manuscripts: this work took into account a selection of maps and documents representing the Venice Lagoon and the Adriatic coast. The first part of this research focused on the application of a scientific method for digital acquisition of historical cartography; thanks to the Geomatic tools and especially to digital photogrammetry it is possible to acquire metric, semantic and symbolic information and also the three-dimensional shape of the geometrical support to correct the deformations occurred over time. In order to allow historical and morphological analysis of the Venice Lagoon, one of the main goals of this research will be the creation of a digital catalogue on a web-gis platform with all the ancient maps acquired. In this way it will be possible to query and to overlap the maps in an interactive way, allowing studies and comparisons with the more recent cartography. The applied procedure of recovery and valorization of historical cartography is divided into three different phases: acquisition, georeferencing and data elaboration of maps in a digital environment. This research underlines the application of a scientific procedure for the conservation and valorization of the historical Cartographic Heritage

La polizia penitenziaria: condizioni lavorative e salute organizzativa negli istituti penitenziari del Veneto

but also to many other people involved in this social context, the tools to understand and interpret the prison world, a worldthat is very complex and various. By this research we wanted to study the organizational health of the prison officers whowork in the nine Veneto’s prison using the Multidimensional Organizational Health Questionnaire (MOHQ) (416 respondents).The results of this study highlighted how the category of the prison, together with some other variables such as therank of the officers, their role in the institute, the length of their service and the typology of their working hour, can influencetheir working conditions.n Italia la scarsa presenza di studi relativi al contesto penitenziario ed in particolar modo agli operatori di polizia penitenziariarappresenta un aspetto problematico che può precludere ai ricercatori, ma non solo, gli strumenti adatti per comprendere edinterpretare un mondo tanto complesso e variegato quale il carcere. Con questo studio si è voluto indagare la salute organizzativadel personale di polizia penitenziaria che lavora presso i nove istituti di pena del Veneto attraverso l’utilizzo delQuestionario Multidimensionale della Salute Organizzativa (MOHQ) (416 rispondenti). I risultati raccolti dipingono unpanorama molto differenziato, dove la tipologia d’istituto assieme ad altre variabili, quali la qualifica, il ruolo ricoperto nell’istituto,gli anni di servizio e la tipologia d’orario lavorativo, vanno ad influire sulle condizioni lavorative

Heparin Induces Apoptosis in Lymphocytes from B-cell Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia.

It has been shown that glycosaminoglycans play a role in the regulation of immune response. In particular, heparin exerts an antiproliferative and apoptotic action in different cellular systems. In this study we evaluate whether heparin can also induce a naturally occurring programmed cell death in lymphocytes from B-chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B-CLL), a neoplastic lineage where apoptosis is blocked by the expression of the proto-oncogene bc1-2. Peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL) from 7 cases of B-CLL patients in different stages were cultured with three different heparin sodium concentrations for 4 days. Apoptosis was evaluated by agarose gel electrophoresis and by cytofluorimetric analysis. Bcl-2 expression was tested by flow cytometric analysis and immunohistochemistry on cytospin preparations. Agarose gel electrophoresis showed the characteristic DNA fragmentation pattern of apoptosis in all the cases of B-CLL stage III and IV after heparin incubation. DNA from normal and neoplastic lymphocytes cultured without heparin did not undergo spontaneous apoptosis. Cytofluorimetric analysis confirmed the agarose gel pattern and found a level of apoptosis over 50% after culture of neoplastic PBL with heparin. In these cases bcl-2 expression was found to be significantly reduced after heparin incubation when comparing to bcl-2 level before incubation. Our data adds further evidence regarding the potential role of heparin in oncogene inhibition and in apoptosis induction. In particular, the induction of apoptosis in neoplastic lymphocytes by heparin may have a role in the complicated field of interactions between the immune system and the blood vessels by glycosaminoglycans

The Release of Tissue Factor Pathway Inhibitor and Platelet Factor 4 After Heparin Injection in Patients with Thrombocytosis.

Platelet factor 4 (PF4) and tissue factor pathway inhibitor (TFPI) are two proteins with high affinity for heparin. They are each stored in platelets, as well as on endothelial cell surfaces, from where both are displaced or released following an injection of heparin with a rapid and marked increase in serum levels. Prior work has demonstrated that the platelet count is one of the factors affecting the levels of heparin-releasable PF4. We therefore characterized the response to a dose of intravenous heparin previously demonstrated to completely displace PF4 from the non-platelet pool in subjects with normal or increased platelet counts. Seventeen patients with essential thrombocytosis (ET), 10 patients with polycythemia vera and high platelet counts (PV-H), 7 patients with polycythemia vera and normal platelet counts (PV-N) and 10 controls received an initial bolus of 40 I.U./kg of unfractionated heparin, followed 2 hours later by a 2nd bolus of a fixed dose of 1000 I.U. TFPI activity did not show any variation among the different groups, either before (TFPI) or after (HR-TFPI) the first bolus of heparin: ET, TFPI 92.6 ± 21.5%, HR-TFPI 298.3 ± 165.8; PV-H, TFPI 91.5 ± 32.0, HR-TFPI 210 ± 1.0; PV-N, TFPI 69.4 ± 24.0, HR-TFPI 203.0 ± 79.0; C, TFPI 109.5 ± 33.5, HR-TFPI 234.0 ± 60.4. TFPI activity returned to basal values prior to the 2nd injection of heparin, which again elicited a rise in TFPI, albeit smaller due to the lower level of heparin injected. In contrast to the lack of any difference between groups with respect to TFPI, the level of heparin-releasable PF4 (HR-PF4) was significantly higher in ET and PV-H patients compared to PV-N patients or controls. However when normalized for platelet count, both PV-H and PV-N had HR-PF4 levels after the 1st heparin injection that were significantly higher than observed in ET patients (PV-H 1.163 + 0.108, PV-N 1.411 + 0.019, ET 0.737 + 0.086 ng/10/3 platelets) supporting an increased platelet activation in PV. Thus, although platelets contain approximately 5-10% of the total amount of TFPI in plasma, they do not affect the major intravascular pool of TFPI mobilizable by heparin. However, since the concentration at the site of vessel wall injury is enhanced several-fold, TFPI could play a role in competing with PF4 to limit thrombus formation in patients with high platelet count